Posts Tagged ‘need’

So I must be honest, I am not as over the moon in my new job as I expected to be. Perhaps I am naïve to expect to feel so happy, but it’s a saving grace that Mike is there with me because otherwise it would be a bit lonely and I would have nobody to vent to who knows precisely what I’m going through, because he is going through the exact same stuff. However, although he was a bit unsure after the first day, the job seems to have grown on him more than it has for me. I am looking forward to going to work tomorrow, but mainly because it will alleviate the boredom of this weekend at home, and mean that my next weekend in London with Toby will approach that much more quickly. The difficult thing is that there is nothing specific I can put my finger on – all the staff are lovely, I finally met my tutees (although if they’re doing a reshuffle so that I am not unfairly laden with more students than any other tutor, some of them won’t be my tutees after all) and apart from a few cheeky ones (which you have to expect when they’re aged 16-19), they all seem pretty nice so far. Term starts tomorrow and I’ll be into the real job rather than preparation and laying the groundwork and multiple meetings which seem designed to confuse something which ends up being the common sense I had expected. I am looking forward to starting, but I don’t feel the enthusiasm I felt a month ago (yes, this is my 4th week!). I don’t really know why, but I feel like something’s missing lately and I can’t pinpoint what, so I’ll just keep going and hopefully I’ll slowly feel more satisfied. I know that I want to take my driving test (hopefully next month), then I can move out, so I am slowly accomplishing my goals but until I get a car I feel a bit like I am in limbo; depending on Mike to take me to and from work, I am scared when he moves house in a month’s time because then I’ll be getting the train / lifts from other members of staff again, and I don’t like that dependence on people I don’t know that well, even at the same time as their kindness touches me.

I also mentioned that I’ve been at home this weekend. I don’t know why, but I feel and act 10 years younger than my 24 years around my parents and grandmother; not throwing teenage tantrums, but keeping an intense amount of privacy and being more feisty and snappy in response to their questions which from their mouths sound nosey; from anyone else, I’m aware that they would just be taking an interest in me and I would happily answer. I don’t know why I revert to this mentality, but I am supposed to be going out for dinner to a pub with my parents tonight; it’s their idea, but I really have an aversion to going and am undecided whether I’m going to attend. It’s more enjoyable for them and for me when it’s just the two of them; I don’t have to make an effort at conversation, they can enjoy some private time, I don’t have to spend a couple of hours quietly hating their choice of venue, I get to have the house to myself for a couple of hours. I know the mature thing would be just to suck it up and go along, but then if the original reason for the meal is to celebrate my new job, why does it feel as if I am accommodating them? I’d really rather just not go, not to mention we already had a meal for the same celebratory reason a month or so ago. Do I really need to do this again? And yet I am aware that I feel like a brat for not wanting to go, as if I can’t spend a couple of hours with my parents without feeling aggrieved. On the one hand, I need to grow up; on the other hand, why should I still feel obliged to do these things if I am an adult, earn my own salary (finally! and that is a good feeling), make my own decisions and therefore should have choice over whether I want to do something or not? Am I right or wrong to feel guilty?

Talking of guilty, I am tempted to alleviate my boredom and muted despair by going to a café in Cabot Circus this afternoon – let’s face it, I have nothing better to do and I get severe cabin fever staying inside all day. Now, I know I don’t need to spend money, but as I got my first payment a week and a half ago and it was a lovely boost, I know that I only have another few weeks to manage with more than enough money to get me through. Yet I had a lovely coffee yesterday, and I wish that I could get out and about without having to spend money in the process. I am also tempted to buy a bottle of Gucci Guilty because the fragrance smells nice enough but the bottle will look KILLER on my perfume shelf (I am a Gucci fan). Check it:

Sexy non? I think so, and I can already see that if I go into town, my resistance will crumble and I will end up with a bottle. A bottle of fragrance that I don’t need (although I have been quite good and slowly clearing out my stocks), to make myself feel better for how long? I do love shopping, and retail therapy has always been something I’ve enjoyed – buying presents for others or for myself, I enjoy spending money and any excuse to do so is welcome in my book. However, even though I most probably will possess this bottle within a few hours, I will also know that it is just an excuse. An expensive excuse to distract myself, feel happy for a while until it fades and I’m left in the same predicament. I miss my wonderful boyfriend Toby, and I am so glad to have a beautiful Thomas Sabo ring he put on my finger (no, not an engagement ring, rather a “just-because” present – just because! I got him an iPod touch which he has been sorely in need of) because even when I miss him, I can look at it and have a little part of him with me all the time. I miss seeing my friends in Bristol, because I’m working during the week and in London most weekends that I never get to seem them much and I really miss them! I hope that I can keep my life moving and finally capture the independence I already feel grown for. Then I’ll hopefully be more satisfied, while I work out what the overall meaning of my life should be.

For all of the time that I do spend on my Macbook, texting on my phone, and attached to my iPod, lately I’ve started feeling that my personal reliance on technology, as well as our dependence on it as a society, is getting on my nerves a little bit. I freely admit I could not live without my iPod, but to me that is an addiction to music rather than an addiction to electronics; music is something I know I could never give up, as I’ve always been around music since I can remember. As a child, if it wasn’t on TV, radio or the stereo as my mother and I danced around the living room to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”, then I was singing it.

Even though I had my first mobile phone at 14, I can remember not even wanting one initially – I got it for my 14th birthday with a sparkly cover (my penchant for shiny things has always been well known) and I said to my dad “I told you I didn’t need one!”. I didn’t really use it until I started my first part-time job at WHSmith when I was 16, and suddenly I had an exciting, interesting friendship group outside of school – people who were cool, who hadn’t known me for the last 5 years and had therefore formed preconceptions and misconceptions about me, and with whom I could socialise. Suddenly I was texting and spending my credit like water, and my mobile phone seemed to come into its own. Today, again I couldn’t be without one, and I use it to tweet, send messages, call people if necessary, record song ideas on the go and generally kill time. But then, life simply seems to have changed in the last 10 years; it’s just expected for everyone to have a mobile phone, it’s convenient for meeting people (in the days before texts to say you’re running late or there’s been a change of plan / venue, you had to arrange meets in advance and be where you said you were gonna be, when you said you were gonna be there!), they can come in invaluable in unforeseen circumstances or emergencies… they’re a logistical and social necessity. And yet we survived fine without them 10 years ago… Well, I’m glad in that instance that we’ve come 10 years further.

I adore my Macbook, and I couldn’t imagine getting through my university degrees without it. I remember when my dad gave me his black ex-work laptop to take with me to university; I felt so grown up, 18 years old in a new city with my very own laptop! When I knocked water all over that laptop approximately 3 weeks later and destroyed it beyond repair, I had to survive two weeks (!!!, though this felt like an eternity at the time) completing essays by hand, watching DVDs on my friend’s computer, and checking emails in the communal computer room. It was a massive inconvenience, and it really made me appreciate just how much easier computers have made my working life. In terms of pleasure, music allows me to keep up with (and download) all of the music that I’m interested in. It allows me to write this blog and share it with you all. It allows me to produce and record my songs and create albums like Quiet Stormwhich is my pride and joy, and I’ve felt so privileged to be able to share that with all of you. It’s allowed me to make new friends through myspace and twitter, some of whom I now hold very dear to me. I wouldn’t have gotten to know my boyfriend and realise just how compatible we are without MSN.

And yet, despite all of these obvious considerable pluses, I’ve felt myself getting a teensy bit annoyed. I deleted my facebook a week and a half ago because all of the constant notifications (most of which I had turned off, except then they were clogged up on my profile every time I logged in), the tension between having high privacy settings and resulting awkwardness from restricting certain people who believe they have more of a right to my life than they actually do, the user-unfriendly profile format updates and general invasiveness of it all had just got to the point where I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. Unlike twitter, which is quick, easy and on-the-go, I found that facebook was becoming a cumbersome site which does everything very well (and I will miss the photo-sharing facilities it had), but sorta places an onus on you to join in with every single aspect of it. I like that only a select few of my friends have twitter; it allows me to have a little in-crowd, without having to either censor myself or let everyone in the whole world know exactly what’s going on with me. On facebook, I found that people whom I barely knew were adding me as friends, and after a short period of rejecting them, eventually I just acquiesced because if they were that desperate to be my friend, they might as well inflate my friend count. In short, it just wasn’t fun anymore.

And yet, I felt scared to delete it, because it’s become such an institution. When deactivating my account, facebook’s last stand was to show me pictures of my closest friends along with “Nana will miss you.” “Sarah will miss you.” “Nathalie will miss you.” “Hannah will miss you.” “Toby will miss you.” “Mike will miss you.” My heart panged for a fraction of a second, and then I realised: all of these people have my mobile number, my email, my address. If they really wanna talk to me, or I really wanna talk to them, I will make an effort to do so in a more personal way than facebook offers. At that point, I got pissed off by facebook’s attempt to emotionally blackmail me into using their service, and decisively deactivated my account. That was a week and a half ago, and I haven’t really missed it nor felt tempted to return. I feel emancipated… I’ll let you know how I get on and if I eventually return to the fold! But I’d like to say that I won’t 😉

I spend a lot of my weekends with my laptop taking advantage of the wi-fi in Starbucks in Cabot Circus. Usually I’m getting work done that I can’t get done at home, but sometimes I’m blogging or doing various other things. I remember having to steal neighbours’ wireless internet at home, and the signal constantly cutting out because I would move my laptop a fraction out of range. I appreciate now how lucky and how convenient it is to have a stable internet at my fingertips. But sometimes, if I don’t need to do work, dragging my laptop everywhere is somewhat cumbersome (and my laptop’s not exactly huge!). Between laptop and power adaptor, it takes up a lot of space in my bag (leaving less for necessary cosmetics, obviously) and gets quite heavy. So the last two weekends I’ve made a point of leaving my computer at home. I use my Macbook most evenings, I usually fire it up in the morning while I’m getting ready for uni / work / placement / whatever I’m up to. So in retrospect, I don’t need to carry it wherever I go (especially since half the point of my most recent mobile phone was that it has mobile internet browsing). And that’s exactly it. Technology is a massive convenience, a fantastically useful tool that has revolutionised my life exactly as it’s revolutionised yours. Or if not exactly, then in similar ways. I appreciate it and I can remember enough instances of it failing that I generally don’t take it for granted, despite being under 25 and therefore a “digital native” (if you’re over 25, you’re a “digital immigrant”, so now you know!!! 😛 ). But I don’t want to turn into somebody who doesn’t know how to live without technology. I used to be happy just singing songs, doing jigsaw puzzles, watching TV and reading books – no internet, no cell, no computer, no iPod, no Playstation. I could spend days doing simple things like that, and while I’m sure that these days I’d get bored after a while, I want to know from time to time that I’m still capable of living independent of these things that I feel I need, that we’ve all become used to thinking that we need, but we don’t really. We may need them to survive in our contemporary social landscape, but our lives won’t physically end without them. I’m currently trying to teach myself that.